FTC Encourages Consumers to Forward Them Spam

Burl Ives writes "See this CNN Article. 'The FTC encourages consumers to forward any spam they receive to the e-mail address uce@ftc.gov'. I'd say if they've posted their e-mail on the web, they are probably getting as much as the rest of us already, which isn't to say I'm not hoping to see some discussion of using the statistical spam sorters to auto forward a lot to them in encouragement..." I've been using SpamAssassin for some time now with excellent results. Perhaps now I need to have my spam folder auto-forward to the FTC as well.

Comments

autoforwarding...

[Anonymous Coward]

is a bad idea because you can send false positives... you should know that CouboiKneel!

from the posting

[no reason to be here]

I'd say if they've posted their e-mail on the web, they are probably getting as much as the rest of us already

most spammers are smart enough not to spam a .gov e-mail address.

Re:What will they do?

[Anonymous Coward]

They obviously haven't decided yet. They're still just prosecuting "fraud" and can't do anything else until there's actually a law that backs the action up.

Re:How about international use?

[Angry White Guy]

If you're that interested, I would forward anything that apparently originated from the US, or is promoting US company interest. And lobby your government to do something about spam coming to your accounts.
Hopefully, an honest attempt will be made by the US authorities to combat spam, and it sets a precident in other countries.

Now if only Nigeria would set one up, I could do something about those damned 419 emails I keep getting!

Increasing the waste of resources

[ergo98]

Is this really necessary? Personally I'd think a much better approach would be to simply set up test accounts (not with .gov, but I mean on AOL, local ISPs, etc) and reference the email on a couple of webpages, and perhaps in a usenet posting. They will, without any doubt, very quickly get every spam that everyone else gets, without getting hundreds of thousands of duplicates of each and every spam. This idea of forwarding all spams, either a request or some people who have mentioned that they do this by default, is just a grotesque waste of internet resources, doubling or tripling the damage a spam does.

Having said that, spam is grotesquely out of control: My hotmail inbox now gets about 90 spams a day, and while Hotmail's spam filter catches most of them, I still have a noise floor as a dozen or so make it into my inbox every day (and conversely I have to go through the Junk Mail folder every week or so as real emails get stuck in there, particularly when associates or friends use subject lines like "BTW").

I won't do it

[Hank Kingsley]

As much as I hate spam, I won't turn to the FTC or any other government agency to resolve the problem.

If you think the Net should be as autonomous as possible -- and that the government should not be allowed to restrict the free flow of information -- then you can't have it both ways and go running to the government when that flow of information is to your annoyance rather than to your benefit.

Re:I won't do it

[Guppy06]

"and that the government should not be allowed to restrict the free flow of information"

Please allow me to gratuitously quote myself:

I have seen some ineffective bills drift through both houses of Congress that are written to allow unsolicited messages so long as they have an "opt-out" mechanism. Ignoring the fact that such legal loopholes would essentially negate the law entirely (can you prove that you tried to opt out?), it quite literally sickens me the way some of your fellow members of Congress feel that spam is somehow an issue dealing with the freedom of speech. The mere existence of the internet and the supposed changes it has on how business and the legal system work (even though such "changes" have been shown to be a lie) have helped to convince these poor fools that people should somehow have a right to use and abuse the property of others. Does my neighbor have the constitutional right to break my kneecap so long as they provide me with the ability to "opt out" of future kneecappings?

The United States Constitution guarantees that all citizens are free to say what they want. It does not guarantee a soapbox upon which they can say it. Just as I am not guaranteed the right to have a billboard on Interstate 10, spammers should not have the "right" to use the resources of others simply because they're there.

Spam isn't about the "free flow of information." It is the equivalent of graffiti. You are free to say whatever the hell you want, just don't use my e-mail account space.

.gov & .mil

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say if they've posted their e-mail on the web, they are probably getting as much as the rest of us already,

Negative, most spammers block .gov and .mil domains from being collected by their bots, for obvious reasons.

Re:It's only fraud if...

[swb]

I don't think the simpleminded "But I didn't know it wouldn't work" excuse really carries any legal water. It might get a 5 year old out of a spanking for taking cookies from the cookie jar, but I don't think it allows someone to feign ignorance to sell magic pixie dust.

Re:What will they do?

[Eric Damron]

"I used to send them all my spam, but like you, I started wondering what they did with it."

Make a quilt maybe? hehe

Seriously, they are probably trying to gather data to support some kind of action or to get a better sense of what should be done.

Unfortunately you won't see a complete ban on spam. Likely there will be 'acceptable spam' defined.

I believe that they will adopt a 'honest email' policy. That is all email is okay if there is no deception. Truthful return address, subject line and an opt-out method that isn't used to gather the email addresses of 'the live ones.'

One State (I don't remember which.) is considering requiring all spams to contain some standard indicator in the header that would allow users to easily identify the email as spam. Like 'ADV.' Of course the spammers don't want their emails to be easily identified for what they really are. That would make it too easy for ISP's to bit bucket them.

I do feel however that we should be given the power to reliably identify spam. Opt-out strategies do not work. Obviously if your email address is being sold and traded by hundreds or thousands of spammers, you could spend a lot of time from now until hell freezes over opting out again and again and again.... If all legal spam carried 'ADV' in the header we could opt-out ourselves by filtering the junk. Spam that didn't carry the 'ADV' flag would have to be treated seriously and offenders fined, jailed or killed. :-)